Executive Summary: Helping Colombia Sustain Progress Toward Peace

Plan Colombia-a six-year,
U.S.-backed plan to help Colombia combat drug trafficking and
ter­rorism and strengthen public institutions-is slated to end
in 2006. Initially, the plan lacked details and offered sanctuary
to violent guerrillas, but in 2002, newly elected President Alvaro
Uribe Vélez brought to bear the political will needed to
improve the strategy and bring illegal armed groups to
justice.

Thanks to expanded public
security, unemploy­ment is down, the economy is growing,
justice reforms are taking hold, drug production has decreased, and
rural rebels have demobilized in record numbers. Yet Colombia needs
to expand terrorism-free zones, deploy more soldiers and police to
bring all rebel armies to justice, speed up institutional reforms,
and obtain better cooperation from international allies. As a
partner in this effort, the United States should:

HelpColombia strengthen its military and
police forces to defeat rural terrorist armies,

Prioritizedevelopment support for improving
government accountability and effectiveness,

Encourageneighbors and international allies to
cooperate more closely in curbing regional
narcoterrorism.

A History of
Instability.Historically, weak
gov­ernment and law enforcement have helped Colom­bia to
become a major smuggling nation. During the drug-boom years of the
1970s, Colombia became the primary source of marijuana reaching
American cities. As producers switched to coca and became more
prosperous, the countryside became more violent. The first Bush
Administration responded by launching a five-year, $2 billion
Andean counternarcotics initiative that helped Colombia defeat
major smuggling cartels.

Dismissive of these
efforts, the succeeding Clin­ton Administration cut funding,
decertified Colombia as cooperating on narcotics after
Presi­dent Ernesto Samper was accused of taking cam­paign
contributions from drug lords, and withheld security assistance for
two years. During the interim period, bandit armies like the
communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) took over
much of the trafficking.

In 1998, President
Andrés Pastrana made resumption of U.S. security assistance
a priority. His government authored Plan Colombia, which outlined a
partnership with the United States to reduce trafficking and end
rural conflict by strengthening the economy, reducing public debt,
modernizing the security forces, reforming institu­tions,
securing foreign partnerships, promoting alternate industries,
improving health and educa­tion, and achieving a negotiated
peace with armed rural groups. In 2000, the United States reversed
course, approving $1.3 billion in emergency sup­port for Plan
Colombia and pursuing a comprehen­sive partnership in reforming
the Colombian state instead of narrowly targeting narcotics
trafficking.

Although skeptical of
President Pastrana's peace strategy of giving sanctuary to the FARC
rebels in hopes they would disarm, President George W. Bush pressed
Congress for additional assistance as well as the more expansive
Andean Regional and Andean Counternarcotics initiatives that
included Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. In 2002, the flawed
peace process was discarded, and Alvaro Uribe was elected president
after pledging a more serious effort against
narcoterrorism.

Partial
Success.Uribe doubled aerial drug
crop eradication and collected a $780 million war tax to pay for
two new army battalions. As a consequence, mayors and police are
back in all 1,098 municipal­ities. Cultivation of coca crops
has declined by 33 percent, and cultivation of the opium poppy has
declined by 25 percent. From 2003 to 2004, terror­ist attacks
declined by 42 percent while demobili­zations and desertions
from rebel and paramilitary groups rose from 1,934 to
2,489.

Even though peace
negotiations with the Marxist rebels have not yet advanced, the
paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces (AUC) have begun a
bloc-by-bloc demobilization. In June 2005, the Colombian congress
passed a justice and peace law that offered leniency to most former
combatants, balanced by punishment for those who committed grievous
crimes. Moreover, increased security and certainty have boosted
public confidence and helped the national economy to recover from a
recession in 1999, growing by 3.9 percent in 2003. Unemployment
fell from a high of 20.5 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in
2004.

The Road Ahead.Despite this welcome
progress, Colombia is not yet strong enough to stamp out drug
trafficking or force the Marxist rebels to demobilize. Moreover,
social and eco­nomic reforms need more resources, and public
institutions must improve at a faster pace for life in small towns
to improve noticeably. To help Colom­bia achieve its goals, the
Bush Administration should continue Plan Colombia funding. However,
it should target the $550 million provided this year to help
Colombia to:

Expand its security
forcesto surround and
defeat illegal armed bands. The United States should help the
Colombian government to pro­vide better air mobility and
training.

Improve local
governanceto
consolidate state authority in terrorism-free zones.

Encourage more cooperation from
regional and international alliesin curbing regional narcoterrorism by
denying territory to narco­terrorists.

Conclusion.Colombia is an
important trade partner and democratic linchpin in South America.
It was a disintegrating state in the 1990s and has managed to turn
itself around with help from the United States and other allies.
Continuing this part­nership will sustain stable markets for
U.S. busi­nesses and reduce the regional instability caused by
lawlessness and narcoterrorism.

Stephen
Johnson is Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America
in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies,
a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for
International Stud­ies, at The Heritage
Foundation.